This invention relates to a projection lens system used for photolithographic systems designed to project fine circuit patterns such as ICs and LSIs onto semiconductor substrates and, more particularly, to a projecting lens system suitable for exposing integrated circuit patterns onto silicon wafers using light sources having wavelengths between a about 300-150 nm range of ultraviolet rays emanating from excimer laser in particular and a wavelength range of vacuum ultraviolet rays.
So far, step-and-repeat reduction photolithographic exposure systems (now often called STEPPER for short) have been used for exposing integrated circuit patterns such as ICs and LSIs onto silicon wafers, and projection lens systems used for such systems have increasingly been required to have a very high resolving power (resolution) so as to keep pace with the high integration density of integrated circuits now in great demand. In general, the shorter the wavelength of the light used, the better the resolving power of the image projected through projection lens systems. Hence, the wavelength of the light used to expose integrated circuit patterns now becomes shorter and shorter. The wavelengths of light sources used with the STEPPER systems are usually g-line (436 nm) or i-line (365 nm). But in so far as the light having these wavelengths is used, much difficulty would be involved in achieving a high resolving power of the order of about 0.3 .mu.m that is required to fabricate 64 MDRAMs. Thus, excimer lasers KrF (248 nm) and ArF (193 nm) are now being attracted as the light sources of the next generation having shorter wavelengths.
Excimer laser light has a very short wavelength; this implies that an ordinary type of glass can never be used as the material for projection lens systems, because it is insufficient in terms of transmission. In view of transmission, quartz (SiO.sub.2) or fluorite (CaF.sub.2) may be used, but practical lens material is still limited to quartz, because fluorite involves the problem that it is soft and so difficult to process. For this reason, projection lens systems for step-and-repeat reduction photolithographic exposure systems using excimer lasers as the light sources are still made up of quartz only or a single vitreous material alone, rendering correction of chromatic aberration difficult. In order to obtain the desired resolving power, it is therefore required to narrow the wavelength bandwidth of light emitted by a laser light source to such a degree that no correction of chromatic aberration is needed.
As its wavelength bandwidth becomes narrow, however, the excimer laser is more likely to decrease in output in theory and so is more difficult to excite. In the case of step-and-repeat reduction photolithographic exposure systems, reductions in the outputs of light sources would account for reductions in their throughputs; that is, when the excimer laser is used, making its wavelength bandwidth narrow should be avoided, if circumstances allow, because it is incompatible with the chromatic aberration problem.